Bart D. Ehrman's Blog, page 283

The Marvels of our Universe

Even though I am no longer a believer, I still sometimes read and think about the book of Psalms in the Old Testament. Just yesterday I had occasion to quote Psalm 8 to my wife. In the beautiful and most familiar (though completely non-inclusive!) wording of the King James Version, this is the psalm.

OLord, our Lord, how excellent is thy name in all the earth! who hast set thy glory above the heavens.

2Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings hast thou ordained strength because of thine enemie...

Important Blog Issues

A couple of blog issues.

FIRST: I will be giving public lectures after the New Year at the current locations. These are all free and open to the world at large. I don’t know the topics in every case, but will know closer to the times. If you are anywhere near: feel free to come! All lectures are in the evening.

Thursday January 26: Michigan State University, East Lansing Michigan. Topic: Did the Early Christians Forget Jesus? Eyewitnesses, Oral Traditions, and Distorted Memories. Thursday Fe...

Problems with Inclusive Language Translations

The policy of the NRSV translation committee on inclusive language was sensible, in my view. It involved a three-pronged approach.

Any passage that was referring to both men and women was to be rendered inclusively, even if the original language (Hebrew or Greek) used masculine terms (“men,” “man,” “brothers,” “he” etc.). Any passage that was explicitly referring only to men, or only to women, was to be left as referring only to men or to women. All references to the Deity that in the origin...

Inclusive Language in Bible Translations

One of the most difficult issues that the New Revised Standard Version translation committee had to address involved the use of inclusive language. Part of the problem was that this issue was not a generally recognized issue (by the wider reading public) when the translators began their work, but was very much an issue when they were already finished with a large chunk of it. The translators were mainly senior scholars who had acquired their linguistic skills before virtually anyone in the ac...

Lost in Translation

In my last post I began to talk about my involvement with the translation committee for the New Revised Standard Version. My Doktorvater, Bruce Metzger, was the chair of the committee and he asked me, during my graduate studies, to be one of the scribes for the Old Testament subcommittee. In that capacity I recorded all the votes that were taken by the translators for revisions of the text of the Revised Standard Version, in whichever subsection of the committee I was assigned to. Normally th...

My Work for the New Revised Standard Version Committee

QUESTION:

If my memory serves me, you (as a graduate student?) were involved in the development of the NRSV Bible version in 1989. Could you describe your work please?

RESPONSE:

Yes, that’s right. The New Revised Standard Version Committee was appointed by the U.S. National Council of Churches to produce a revision of the famous Revised Standard Version (RSV) of the Bible, which had come out in 1952. Since the time when the RSV had been produced (mainly in the 1940s), many important developme...

Was Cephas Peter? The Rest of the Argument

I have received a number of emails asking me about the Cephas and Peter article I started giving a couple of posts ago, and most of the questions, as it turns out, are answered in the *second* half of the article, which I had originally planned not to provide here on the blog. So now I’ve decided, well—why not?

And so here is the rest of the article for anyone who is interested. For those not interested in all the convoluted ins and outs of the argument, you may want to see the end, the summa...

Cephas and Peter in the Writings of Paul (Who Knew Them)

In my previous post I gave the evidence that in the early church there were writers who maintained that Cephas and Peter were *not* the same person, despite what is explicitly said in John 1:42. As some readers have noted to me, that differentiation *may* have been driven by a very clear and certain reason: in Galatians 2 Paul confronts “Cephas” and blasts him for not understanding the Gospel. Could there have been a major rift between the two most important apostles of early Christianity? Su...

Lecture at Fresno City College

Here is a video of a discussion that I had on my book “How Jesus Became God” at Fresno City College, with Professor of Philosophy Wendell Stephenson, on February 18, 2016 at 7:00p.m. After our back and forth the floor was opened opened to Q&A from the audience.

News release about event: http://www.therampageonline.com/news/...

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Are Cephas and Peter Two Different People?

QUESTION:

I remember your saying that you once – wrongly – entertained a theory about “Cephas” and “Peter” being two different people. I *don’t* remember your explaining why you’d thought that, and what convinced you the theory was wrong. I’d still like to know!

RESPONSE:

I get asked this question on occasion and I’ve decided to do something unusual (for the blog) to answer it. Years ago I wrote a controversial article on the topic for an academic journal. Here I thought it might be interest...